# GEB Reading Notes #3: Preface to the Twentieth-anniversary Edition


(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

A good part of my evenings last week was spent exploring and learning about [classical music](../concert/). But my reading hasn't stopped, and I'm continuing to write notes to catch up. I also discovered the [GEB Fandom](https://godel-escher-bach.fandom.com/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach_Wiki) during this time. I've updated the Chinese versions of my first two posts with some new insights I picked up there (the English versions will have to wait). It's quite satisfying to realize that I can independently get most of the jokes and references.

Through the Fandom wiki, I discovered that the author also wrote a [Preface to GEB's Twentieth-anniversary Edition](https://godel-escher-bach.fandom.com/wiki/Preface_to_GEB%27s_Twentieth-anniversary_Edition), which contains quite a few interesting details. I thought I'd jot them down here. (GEB was originally published in 1979, so the twentieth-anniversary edition came out in 1999.)

## The Central Theme of the Book

The author begins by revisiting a fundamental question: What exactly is this book about? Its subject matter is so broad and eclectic that readers can easily lose sight of the main thread. The author says that what he really wants to explore is where intelligence comes from, how consciousness develops, and why humans have the concept of "I." He says, "let me try one last time," though apparently he still wasn't entirely satisfied with the result, since he went on to publish *I Am a Strange Loop* in 2007. Clearly, the author believes that "strange loops," or "tangled hierarchies," play a crucial role in the emergence of consciousness and intelligence.

In his original manuscript, the author had only Gödel's incompleteness theorem and the human brain. Escher and Bach were nowhere to be found. But he realized that their works were so relevant to his theme, visually and aurally, that he decided to bring them into the book.

He then essentially revisits the material from the Introduction: Russell's theory of types, *Principia Mathematica*, and Gödel's genius in using magic to defeat magic. A system as powerful as *Principia Mathematica* must inevitably be capable of constructing self-reference.

The author draws an analogy with the brain. Our brains model the external world and create concepts. Their capabilities are so powerful that they can construct the self-referential concept of "I." Intelligence is not a black-and-white matter but a spectrum. "Souls" come in different sizes. Roughly speaking, this spectrum can be represented by a progression from rocks to plants, mosquitoes, cats and dogs, and finally humans. In *I Am a Strange Loop*, the author takes this idea even further, suggesting that individual humans also possess souls of different sizes. It's a somewhat uncomfortable thing to say, but he has a point.

The author is careful to clarify that he is not suggesting that the system of *Principia Mathematica* has a soul in the same way humans do. After all, the formal system in which *Principia Mathematica* operates is much less complex than the real world in which our brains exist, and it does not evolve over time.

### How the Book Came to Be

The previous section overlaps considerably with the main text and *I Am a Strange Loop*, but the story of how the book came together is quite fascinating.

The author was born in 1945 and graduated from Stanford as an undergraduate. In 1967, at the age of 22, he dropped out of the graduate mathematics program at Berkeley and went to the University of Oregon to pursue a PhD in physics.

In May 1972, five years later and now 27 years old, he stumbled upon a book on logic in a bookstore, rekindling an interest he had once had. His doctoral research wasn't going particularly well (well, we all know how that goes!), so he decided to give himself a break and take a road trip eastward. Sometimes he camped out in the wilderness; other times he spent his days reading in university libraries in college towns. As he wrote letters to friends along the way, the initial ideas for this book gradually began to take shape.

Eventually, he arrived in New York, where he taught classes. In 1973, he decided to return to Oregon and finish his PhD. The university offered an opportunity to teach a seminar-style course, and his proposal was accepted. He incorporated his lecture notes and discussions with students into his little manuscript. By then, he felt that the book's core content was already in place and only needed minor revisions.

One day, he came up with an idea for a dialogue featuring Einstein, inspired by Lewis Carroll's dialogues between Achilles and the Tortoise. Somehow, the word "fugue" popped into his head. Being a Bach fan, he thought of incorporating ideas from Bach's music into the dialogues, placing them between chapters as a way for readers to revisit newly introduced concepts in a different formal setting.

In early 1974, he switched PhD advisors for the fourth time (!) and, for the last time. He resolved to finish his degree first. After all, it had been almost seven years! By the end of 1975, at the age of 30 (!), he completed his dissertation (his doctoral work is mentioned in Chapter 5 of the book). But his experience in graduate school had convinced him that physics wasn't the right path for him. The subject matter of GEB, particularly artificial intelligence, seemed to be where his real passion lay. So he spent the next two years as a stay-at-home scholar (he jokingly credits the Hofstadter Fellowship for making this possible) and transitioned into AI research.

During this period, he rewrote the manuscript yet again, establishing the book's distinctive style: wordplay, imitations of musical forms, and so on. He knew he was doing something unconventional, deliberately breaking the rules, but he went ahead anyway: "because I felt confident that what I was doing simply had to be done, and that it had an intrinsic rightness to it." The author believes that the form of the book is just as important as its content, because one of its central themes is precisely that form and content complement and define each other, and cannot be separated.

### The Publishing Process

We've all heard stories about the hardships faced by unknown authors trying to get their first book published. But the author says his experience was relatively smooth.

In 1977, he landed a faculty position at Indiana University. Midway through the year, he sent sample chapters to 15 publishers. Three or four expressed interest, so he sent them the complete manuscript. The first two took several months before eventually rejecting it. Then, just before Christmas, Basic Books gave him an encouraging response. This would become his long-term publisher.

That winter was bitterly cold, and the university was even closed for three weeks. He decided to drive to New York to visit some friends. While passing through the small town of Clarion, Pennsylvania, he called Basic Books and received a positive answer. Clarion means a trumpet or a clear ringing sound. What a promising omen!

Next came the typesetting, which the author took upon himself. He spent the entire summer of 1978 at Stanford producing the galleys. Just when he thought the job was done, he discovered that wear and tear on the aging equipment had rendered the galleys unacceptable. He had to start all over again.

Once the fall semester began, he taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Indiana University. After finishing his Thursday afternoon classes, he would fly to California and work like crazy until Monday afternoon, then fly back to Indiana. At his most extreme, he once worked continuously for 40 hours without sleep! All those flights came out of his own pocket. What a grueling schedule! But every cloud has a silver lining: in the process of redoing the typesetting, he corrected a huge number of typographical errors.

### The Book's Content and Its Translations

The original dialogue featuring Einstein that the author wrote was never included in GEB.

The author eventually realized that his use of "he" and "man" as generic references to humanity was sexist. A product of its time, I suppose! All the characters in the dialogues—Achilles, the Tortoise, the Crab, the Anteater, Bach, Babbage, and so on—were male. He initially considered changing some of the characters to female, but felt that introducing gender issues would not really help, since the topics under discussion were entirely abstract and unrelated to gender. In the end, he decided to leave things as they were, adding only two female supporting characters in "A Little Harmonic Labyrinth" and "Prelude... Ant Fugue." He says he regrets this decision.

The author then recounts an idea for a dialogue in which his characters realize that, although they have free will, they are nevertheless fictional creations of a sexist male author. They summon the author, who turns out to be male, as expected. The author defends himself by saying that his sexism isn't his fault; it's the fault of his creator. So they summon his God—and, haha, it turns out that God is a girl! This dialogue eventually evolved into the book's concluding dialogue, "Six-Part Ricercar."

An unexpected opportunity to correct this oversight came with translating GEB into other languages.

The first translation was into French (and this is where the author begins to casually show off his multilingual abilities). Because of GEB's "the medium is the message" nature, he spent a full year or so going through the original manuscript sentence by sentence, preparing an annotated version explaining all the wordplay, puns, and linguistic tricks for translators to use as a reference. (This ties in nicely with the [Preface to the Chinese Edition](../GEB-1/).)

When the French translator began work in 1983, a particular problem arose: the French word for tortoise, *tortue*, is feminine, while the Tortoise in the book is male. The author explains that Lewis Carroll never actually specified the Tortoise's gender, but he had simply assumed it was male. Otherwise, "I would not only have known that she was female, but I would have known why she was female."

The translator cautiously asked whether the author would be willing to let the Tortoise become female in the French translation. This was exactly what he had been hoping for! He readily agreed, and the Tortoise became *Madame Tortue*. This male-female contrast, in an unexpected way, restored Carroll's original gender-neutral Tortoise. The Italian translation also made the Tortoise female, calling her *signorina Tartaruga*.

### Responses to Criticism of the Book

After the French edition was published, one review criticized the book's apparent preference for Zen Buddhism and its admiration for the American composer John Cage, arguing that both reflected a dangerous anti-scientific tendency.

The author's response was essentially: Have you actually read my book? He explains that he merely adds a little Chinese seasoning to a Western-style meal. In Chapter 9, he explicitly describes Zen's claims as "confusing and silly," which is hardly consistent with his own core values. And as for Cage, the title of the book contains Bach, not Cage! In "Canon by Intervallic Augmentation," he explicitly criticizes Cage's music.

Despite being repeatedly misunderstood, the author expresses his gratitude for the enthusiasm of his readers. The German edition of GEB held the number-one spot on the nonfiction bestseller list for five months in 1985. The two German names in the title, together with the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth, may well have helped. The author also mentions the other translations, including the Chinese edition. On the one hand, he had never imagined while writing the book that it would eventually be translated into other languages. On the other hand, he had always been confident that the book would find an audience.

### Twenty Years of Looking Back

Alongside his academic teaching and research, the author continued publishing books.

In 1981, he published *The Mind's I*, which included the Einstein dialogue that had been cut from GEB. From 1981 to 1983, he wrote a monthly column for *Scientific American* called "Metamagical Themas." The title is an anagram of "Mathematical Games," the famous column that Martin Gardner had written in the same magazine for the previous 25 years. In 1985, the columns were collected into a book, along with additional material. In 1987, he published another, considerably more niche book.

The author says that his academic research can be viewed as an extension of Chapter 19 of GEB. The research was collected and published in book form in 1995.

He was also deeply involved in translating GEB into several languages, which eventually led to his fascination with poetry translation. In 1997, he published *Le Ton beau de Marot*, sharing his thoughts and experiences on the subject. He says writing this book was just as enjoyable as writing GEB 20 years earlier, and describes it as "probably the best book I will ever write."

Then, almost as an aside, he mentions that he had also translated Pushkin's verse novel *Eugene Onegin*. It was published in 1999, coinciding with the 200th anniversary of Pushkin's birth. At this point, he might as well have added, "Everybody, go buy my books!" Good grief, using the preface to advertise his other books—a full-blown Hofstadter cinematic universe!

Back in 1979, the author predicted that no chess program would ever defeat the strongest human chess player. By 1999, this prediction had already been proven wrong. And of course, AlphaGo and ChatGPT came along later, making the prediction look even more dated.

So why not revise GEB to bring it up to date? The author explains that he did make various small revisions in different translations. For example, the BACH goblet in "Contracrostipunctus" really exists. It wasn't actually blown by Bach as described in the book, but it does have the BACH melody engraved on it. The French edition therefore included a photograph of the glass.

However, he didn't want to make major changes to the text, such as incorporating the latest developments in machine learning. It would be difficult to decide what to update and what to leave untouched. He is somewhat obsessive about this—even refusing to correct typos. His reasoning is that this is the work he created back then, and perhaps it is better to leave it as it was.

### Reflections

Wow, there is a lot packed into this preface!

The opening summary of the book's central themes overlaps considerably with the main text, while the self-promotion toward the end can be skimmed. But the middle sections, describing how the book was written and published, gave me a fascinating glimpse into all the behind-the-scenes work and struggles.

The discussion of translation also has some interesting parallels with the [Preface to the Chinese Edition](../GEB-1/), and offers a few useful hints for reading the main text that follows.